Skilled’s Score
Execs
- Provides extra ports to the again of Mac mini
- Enclosures for HDD and SSD
- 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4
Cons
- No entrance ports
- No card reader
Our Verdict
Get monetary savings on Apple’s costly custom-built inside storage choices with this good hub that boasts each a hard-drive bay and quick SSD enclosure, plus 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Value When Reviewed
From $279.99
Greatest Costs As we speak: OWC miniStack STX
Suitable with: Mac mini M2 & M2 Professional 2023; M1 2020; Mac mini 2018; Mac Studio 2022
Measurement: 7.8 x 7.8 x 1.5 inches
Ports:
- 4x Thunderbolt 4 ports (40Gbps)
- Inner SSD enclosure
- Inner HDD bay
You get quicker ports and two drive bays within the OWC miniStack STX hub for Mac mini or Mac Studio. The miniStack STX matches the Mac’s personal Thunderbolt 4 bandwidth and its SSD drive bay will assist the quickest NVMe M.2 SSDs. By comparability, Satechi’s rival Stand & Hub for Mac mini options 5Gbps USB-C and USB-A ports and slower SATA M.2 SSDs.
Mixed with the Mac mini’s personal roster of ports, with the ministack STX you should have six quick Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB-A ports, plus the mini’s personal ethernet and HDMI ports. The OWC miniStack has one upstream Thunderbolt port that connects to the Mac, and three downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports. With Thunderbolt 4, you’ll be able to create three impartial daisy chains with as much as 5 complete Thunderbolt units with a USB gadget on the top of every chain (eight units complete). Units might be faraway from one chain with out affecting the opposite chains.
Foundry
The ports are all on the again, which looks as if a missed alternative–as does the dearth of an SD or microSD card reader, which is conspicuously absent on Apple’s Mac mini. That stated, including a full set of Thunderbolt 4 ports supplies the flexibleness so as to add quite a lot of units, together with a cheap SD card reader adapter.
Sitting on the dock with two bays
In addition to the quick ports, the OWC miniStack STX gives two drive bays: one for an old-school mechanical exhausting drive and the opposite for an NVMe M.2 SSD. This versatile storage association means you should buy a less expensive exhausting drive for big archives and Time Machine backups, and a speedy (and dearer) SSD when engaged on low-latency instant-access operations.
Whereas NVMe SSDs can attain speeds of three,000MBps, the NVMe slot on the miniStack STX has just one lane of PCIe allotted to it, so the efficiency is restricted to 770MBps real-world.
For better information safety, you should use OWC’s SoftRAID software program on the miniStack STX to create a RAID 1 that routinely maintains similar copies of all of your information on every drive. SoftRAID continuously screens the well being of your disks utilizing S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Evaluation and Reporting Know-how) to check drive reliability and anticipate imminent {hardware} failures.
You should purchase the miniStack STX with empty drive bays ($279.99) or with storage pre-filled in quite a lot of exhausting drives (2.5-inch or 3.5-inch) and SSD mixtures. You might be free to purchase your individual storage elements and match them your self, which is straightforward sufficient if you understand how to make use of a screwdriver and have a gradual hand.
A 1TB inside SSD prices round $50/£50, and a 4TB SSD might be discovered for beneath $400/£400. Apple expenses $1,200 for a 4TB SSD within the high-end Mac mini.
Pre-installed HD choices embrace 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 16TB, 18TB, 20TB.
Pre-installed SSD choices embrace: 1TB, 4TB, 8TB
The highest-end pre-built mannequin with 20TB HD and 8TB SSD prices $1,849– 250 % storage improve on Apple’s most capacious Mac mini.
Foundry
If you wish to replicate Apple’s $4,399 top-end Mac mini configuration (12-core CPU, 32GB RAM, 8TB SSD), you may purchase the 512GB mini for $1,999 after which add the miniStack STX with 8TB SSD for an additional $1,249 for a complete value of $3,248–a financial savings of over $1,000, plus the additional half-terabyte in storage. And also you get all the additional ports plus future storage upgradeability.
The OWC miniStack STX is available in black solely, so it doesn’t match any mannequin of the Mac mini or Mac Studio. It ships with a mini screwdriver and a few screws so as to add an SSD, plus a 0.7m Thunderbolt 4 cable. It boasts a beneficiant three-year guarantee.
Verdict
Get monetary savings on Apple’s costly custom-built inside storage choices with this good hub that boasts each a hard-drive bay and quick SSD enclosure, plus 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports.
